Alrewas

Easter Cruise day 4, 4th April 2013

At Alrewas we said goodbye to David, Penny and Fergus ...


... as they drove off in their Volvo 480.




It was now just the two of us, and we had a walk round the village. We started with the church.


The Easter Garden looked very floral, and much more spring-like than we were experiencing outside.


We saw lots of fine buildings, including the mill.


This old car fits the scene perfectly.


Coming up tomorrow: A fine curry ... and is this the most secure building in Alrewas? Stay tuned!

Lovely morning cruise to Campbell Park

Before returning to our Easter Cruise on Shadow I'll finish off the more recent Milton Keynes outing on Jubilee.

On Monday Ben had to go to work in Central Milton Keynes, so, as the sun and the birds had woken me anyway, I got up and set off from Giffard Park at 0700. The rest of the crew were all still in bed.

This is the best time of day for cruising. The water was still, the sun was bright, the birds were singing, and I was eating my cereal while steering.


Campbell Park was only a couple of miles away, and we got there in plenty of time for Ben to cycle a mile to work. We found a mooring on the right side for CMK, by a large ornamental pond and a convenient small car park. We would use this to load the car to return home later in the day.

The heron on the far side of the pond remained motionless for so long that I thought it must be a fake. I forgot to look again later to see if it had gone.


We left Jubilee at midday. Ally and Ben took it back to the marina in the evening, having entertained visitors Jenny, Neil and Nye.


A & B enjoyed being away from the confines of the marina for a bit, and Jan and I enjoyed our mini cruise on our own boat!

Grand Junction Canal is no cock and bull story

As part of our visit to Ally and Ben in Milton Keynes this weekend we went to a recommended curry house in Stony Stratford. While there we walked along the high street and saw the two famous coaching inns, the Cock and the Bull.

Stony Stratfordians will be eager to tell you that the phrase "cock and bull story" originates from these two hostelries. In the heyday of the coaching era, so they say, the inns would compete with each other for the most outlandish travellers' tales.

Whether that's true or not, one way the Bull scores over the Cock is that the former can claim to be where the Grand Junction Canal was born.


Thankfully there's no mention of tall stories on the simple and informative plaque.

Top Thirty, 2013 week 19

There's a message from Tony Blews below this week's chart ...

Here is the UK Waterways Site Ranking (top thirty places) as it stood at 1530 on Monday 6th May 2013. This is taken, with permission, from Tony Blews's UK Waterways Ranking Site.


1 Canal World Discussion Forums (=)

2 CanalPlanAC (=)

3 Pennine Waterways (=)

4 Jim Shead's Waterways Information (+1)

5 Water Explorer (+1)

6 Living on a Narrowboat (-2)

7 Retirement with No Problem (=)

8 UKCanals Network (+1)

9 Waterway Routes (-1)

10 nb Epiphany (=)

11 Towpath Treks (+2)

12 nb Waiouru (=)

13 boatshare (-2)

14 Canal Shop Company (=)

15 Captain Ahab's Watery Tales (+2)

16 BCBM Ltd (=)

17 NB The Manly Ferry (+4)

18 Narrowboat Dreaming .... Parisien Star (+8)

19 Baddie the Pirate (+3)

20 Narrowboat Chance (-2)

21 Milburn Boats Ltd (-2)

22 Rock n Roll (+8)

23 Narrowboat Briar Rose (-8)

24 Boat Build Blog (-)

25 Skippy's Random Ramblings (-)

26 boatrent (+2)

27 Seyella's Journey (-4)

28 Narrowboat Tacet (+6)

29 Boats and Canals Forum (-4)

30 boats and cruising (-)

31 Halfie (-7)

32 M. B. Willow (-12)

33 NBNorthernPride (-)

34 'Eileen Inlanding' (-2)

35 Narrowboat Starcross (+2)



The figures in parentheses denote the number of places moved since the previous chart;
(-) denotes new entry or re-entry into the chart;
(=) denotes no change.

There are 106 entries, up from 94 last week.

Tony Blews has asked me to remind all users of the UK Waterways Ranking System to update their websites to use the ukwrs.co.uk address instead of the coobeastie.co.uk one. The older coobeastie address will cease working half way though May. Thanks.

To update my Blogger blog I logged in to ukwrs.co.uk; clicked on the Manage Site option in the top left of the page; and copied the code from the appropriate box. Then on my blog I clicked on Layout; found the HTML/Javascript "gadget" corresponding to the ranking position; and replaced the code there with the code I'd copied from UKWRS.

Extra cruising on Jubilee

We're on board Jubilee again, staying briefly with Ally and Ben. They were keen to get out of the marina for a bit, so we cruised up to New Bradwell, winded, and have come back down to Giffard Park (all in Milton Keynes).


It was good to be cruising on Jubilee again - we are looking forward to having the boat back all to ourselves, when they eventually move into their own accommodation.

Seen while cycling: one Candlestick, one Moggie and one wherry

I enjoyed a twenty mile cycle ride yesterday in the sunshine around the lanes of Norfolk. There are some strange road names out there!


I was on my way to help a friend move a car and a whole load of boxes and pieces of furniture.


On a different cycle ride a couple of days before, on the Marriot's Way - a former railway line now cycle/footpath - I saw this depiction of a wherry. This is about a mile from Norwich city centre by the River Wensum.


I'm not really sure why this wherry should be here. There is a small river which the railway crossed by the bridge in the above photo, but I don't think it was navigable this side of New Mills Pumping Station.

Cold easterly wind a feature of our Easter cruise

Some days the wind was stronger and more biting than others. But for nearly every one of the fourteen days of our recent cruise round the Leicester Ring the force was with - or, rather, against - us.


This little shelter at Hunt's Lock, near Fradley Junction, seems to have been blown over by it.

I had my own battle with the wind when trying to get back into the mooring at Wigram's Turn at the end of the cruise. I'll write about that later.

Fradley Junction and nb Percy

Easter Cruise day 4, 4th April 2013, Fradley

After turning right onto the Trent and Mersey at Fradley Junction I took the obligatory photo from the lock looking back at the Swan pub. Not as good as Nev's masthead photo, but a record of our passage.


On exiting the lock I looked out for Percy as I knew Nev moored it in these parts.


Here it is - a hurried snap as we went past. It was at this time that my camera battery ran out; by the time I'd changed it Percy was receding in the distance.


I was to meet Nev and Rachel later, at Willington.